Belief in Oneself
About This Story Hello, internet! I feel like this is the best place to tell a story to all of you today. It's been four years since I was detained for being "mentally unstable" by the government. A false accusation at best...but I guess they have their reasons. Ever since I was a child, I was...different. Not physically, but mentally. I was diagnosed with OCD at an early age, and along with that, I hallucinated things often, not unlike your average drunk. The difference is, after 20 years of having to put up with my visions, people have gotten used to it. No one seems to trust me or what I say. After all, I could just be seeing things. Maybe I'm envisioning me typing this post right now. But enough about me, let's get to the story. My Story It all started 5 years ago. I was 16, and my older brother had left for college. While I was interested in card games, poker, war, even things like Magic the Gathering, my brother was a huge video game buff. He absolutely loved all video games; Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Capcom, Konami, you name it. He owned nearly every main console, from the NES to the Game Boy Micro. It was what he referred to as his "collection". However, his favorite system, without a doubt, was the Nintendo GameCube. He had nearly every game worth your while for the GC and he played it by far the most out of all the consoles (he'd often brag about having 10,000 hours in Melee). My brother and I were very distant. We didn't really like each other, because he couldn't put up with me being so "wrong" all the time due to my chronic hallucinations. I tried so hard to make him love me, because he was the only person even close to my age that I knew--my parents were my only friends. However, when he left for college that day (when I was at school), he left me a box. Just your average box, probably filled with stuff from the attic or something. When I opened it, though, to my surprise, was his cherished GameCube! I couldn't believe my eyes, and I probably shouldn't have in retrospect. Inside that box was an absolutely obscene amount of games as well--everything from Wave Race to Paper Mario 2. On top of these games was a single letter, entitled "To: Mark". I sat down at the table and ripped the envelope open. Dear Mark, I haven't been a brother to you. It has taken me sixteen years to realize that, but I finally have. I cannot even begin to understand what you have gone through, so I won't try to empathize with you. But I do know that your life has been hard. Take this as a token of my love. It is "that" GameCube, along with all 150 of the games I had. I know you'll like video games if you just give them a try, so have fun. I want you to. Your brother, Chase It was something I've always watched him do--play video games. It seemed like such a fun and interactive world, and I longed to get involved--but he would never let me. He always said that I wasn't "mentally capable" of playing them. Despite this, I wanted to please him, so I played. And played and played and played. Through all 150 of his games. I got 100% completion on every single one of them. It took me a whole year, but once I finished, I called him up and told him about my accomplishment! All 150 games? You're really getting to like video games, aren't you? I wish I could congratulate you...but you're not quite done yet. There's one more game in there. Go play it, it's one of my favorites. I'm sure you'll love it. He hung up. 151? I thought. Perhaps I had missed something after all. I went back to my game shelf, and lo and behold, after scanning the shelf, I did see a game I hadn't played yet--Super Smash Bros. Melee! How did I forget that one? It was his favorite, after all. I asked my dad to play a few rounds with me, and he obliged. I popped the small disc into the GameCube and loaded it up. I couldn't believe what I had missed out on! This game was so fun! He had unlocked all the characters and all the stages--a true completionist. After playing three rounds, my dad went back to making dinner, so I tried playing a Classic Mode run by myself. I selected Classic from the menu and began playing. Being the new player I was, I selected five lives and Very Easy mode. I progressed through the levels, but at the 5th one, I died. Expecting to respawn at the top of the screen, instead I got sent to the Continue? screen. I did a double-take and reevaluated my thoughts. I knew I had five lives! After getting mad at the game for a bit, I wanted to Continue, but no option was there. In fact, there were no options--just a black screen with the word Continue? on it. A bit freaked out, I turned off the GameCube and played some Solitaire to relax myself. A bit later, after I had calmed down and rationalized that the game was just glitching, I went and phoned my brother and explained what had happened. You're just hallucinating again, bro. Calm down and try again. The game worked fine when it was with me--maybe the disc needs to be cleaned or something. He hung up. Maybe he was right, that I was just hallucinating. After all, it's pretty much all I do in life. After cleaning the disc off, I sat down and played again. I Selected Classic mode, played through it, etc, etc. I died on the 7th level this time and, again, I got booted to the Continue? screen. This time, however, instead of Continue?, it said "Nobody". I also noticed that my player character, usually in the background in the form of the trophy, wasn't there. Needless to say, I freaked out. There was no way that a game could just do that...But it couldn't be a hallucination either. I had never hallucinated while playing video games before, I was sure of it. So, what was it?''I asked myself. After a bit of winding-down, I took another break and asked my dad to come upstairs to play a round of Classic himself. He did, and when he died five times, he got booted to the Continue? screen with the normal text and the option to continue. "Is that all?" he said. Jittering, I said "Y..yeah, dad. Thanks." He gave the controller back to me and walked downstairs. I needed time to digest what I'd just seen. I laid in my bed and twiddled my thumbs for a while, trying to relax. After coming to the conclusion that it was, in fact, just a hallucination, I went to bed. It was a deep sleep--I was exhausted from the day's events. The next day, I felt refreshed. Instead of playing Melee again, I went and loaded up Pokemon Colosseum--one of my favorites. I had come to the conclusion that it was just a hallucination, and maybe if I played a different game, it'd go away. When I loaded up my save file, I spawned in Phenac City. It was weird--I distinctly remembered saving at Outpost Stand. Fearing the worst, I ran downstairs and got my dad, again, to play. He ran around Phenac for a while, talking to people, entering buildings, the usual. He handed me back the controller and asked me: "Is that it?" I gave a sigh of relief and said, "Yes, dad, that's it. Thanks." He went back downstairs. Relaxed, I picked up the controller and went to enter the Phenac Colosseum. To my surprise, however, I couldn't enter. I tried other buildings like the Poke Center and the Mart, and I couldn't enter those either. All the NPCs wouldn't say anything. I decided to leave Phenac City, but when I got to the Overworld and tried to select a destination, every single location was named "believes" with a blank description. Panicing, I turned off the system. This was getting way too freaky for a hallucination of mine. This simply had to be real. After about a half hour of just walking around the house, I decided to try the game one more time. Facing my fears, I loaded up the game again and was booted to Outpost Stand. All the NPCs talked and the game was normal. I could leave the area and go anywhere I wanted. This only served to make me more skeptical. I was ever vigilant, looking for the slightest sign of something being off. After thoroughly searching through the game and finding it completely normal, I began to play the game for real this time. It was fun, and I played all through the night. I couldn't wait for tomorrow. My fears of the hallucinations vanquished, I eagerly awaited getting some time on Super Mario Sunshine. Waking up in the morning, I bolted straight to the GameCube. It felt just like old times, booting up the thing without everything going all hallucinatory. I booted up Super Mario Sunshine and selected my save file. After the loading screen, I landed in Delfino Plaza. Everything seemed fine. The NPCs said normal things, I could leave the area and all that. Then, I turned my head up to the sky to see that the skybox, usually filled with bright and puffy clouds, instead only had three. Three gigantic clouds that each spelled out the letters y, o, and u. I snapped. Everything in my body just wanted to yell out in frustration. Inside my mind the all-familiar debate raged: real or hallucinatory? I was sick and tired of being toyed with. My rage was simmering inside my body, waiting to be released. But for some reason, I didn't blow my top just yet. I was...intrigued. These were definite words the game was showing to me. Words with meanings...like the game was trying to tell me something. SSBM: Nobody. Colosseum: Believes. Sunshine: You. It was at that moment that I realized what was happening. The games were telling me what I had already known: nobody believes me. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it earlier. It was telling me that nobody trusted me, nobody believed me just because of my condition. It was a terrible way to live. I knew this couldn't be it--there had to be more. So, I walked around the plaza for a while, talking to the Piantas. While most just repeated "nobody believes you", others said more...interesting things. ''"How can you live?" "Where will you go?" "Who will you turn to?" "What will you do?" "Why do you live?" "How can you be?" I thought about these questions. The games, they were right--I was eventually going to grow older and go out on my own. I couldn't stay with my parents my whole life! How would I get a job to pay for a house? How would I be able to function in society if no one could trust me? As I walked around, I noticed a curious Pianta. He was dark gray, a color I'd never seen from any other Pianta, and wearing a black jacket and sunglasses. The jacket was scuffed up, as if he had been in a fight or something. As I went to different areas of the plaza he would always appear, saying something different. "No one ever believed in him." "He had no one to turn to." "He lived a short life, filled with deceit and mistrust." "He had nothing. He knew nothing. He was nothing." "So he had to end it all." "Who is this man?" "You should know." After the message was displayed on the screen, it went black. All I could see on the screen was my own reflection. My own being. I was being shown who the message was talking about, and it was a person I knew all too well. It was myself. After I had pieced together the message, I was completely mortified. There is no way possible that a game could be doing this to me, it just isn't possible! It just had to be some sort of hallucination. I shut down the game once more and bolted downstairs to tell my parents. I blubbered to them about "this scary game" and "talking about me" and "nobody believes me". After calming me down, they came upstairs with me and played the game. I should have seen it coming. The game was completely, absolutely normal. Everything functioned properly, the Piantas said their normal lines..it was all fine. I was simply astounded. "You're just hallucinating, honey!" My mom said in her usual cheerful voice. I yanked the controller out of my dad's hands and started playing the game myself. Everything was still normal. It was almost like the game was taunting me. I yelled at the top of my lungs! I was so frustrated with this teasing by the game that it felt like I was going to explode! My parents tried to calm me down but I couldn't take it anymore. I was beyond the point of reason. "Every single one of these games is different for me! It can't be a hallucination! It has to be real!" I ranted and raved, but they didn't believe me. Eventually my parents got fed up with me. They sent me to bed for the rest of the night. While I laid in my bed, I thought about the game. Was that really what I was seeing? It simply had to be real--none of my hallucinations had been so persistent before. But then again, who's to say it wasn't a hallucination? How can you be certain that anything is real? How could I know that I wasn't going crazy? I decided to consult the Internet for help. First thing in the morning, I got my old camcorder out and took a video of me playing Melee again. I booted up the game and everything seemed normal. I entered Classic Mode again with five lives and Very Easy mode. I got all the way to the 7th level, same as before. When I died, sure enough, the Continue? screen said "you" in the same font (a dark, translucent red) as the Continue would have read, just as I expected. As well, there was no Continue button or Back button anywhere on the screen, just as I thought. After once again considering the possibility of hallucinations, I shut the GameCube off and reviewed my footage. The game played completely normal. Everything was fine. Once I died, the screen went to the normal Continue screen and cut to black shortly after. Enraged, I threw down my camcorder and dialed up my brother. "Hello?" "Oh, hey, Mark. What's up?" "Is this some kind of sick joke?" A bit of a pause on the line. "What are you talking about?" "These games! They keep sending me these messages through them. But only I can see them! Everyone else who plays it gets the entire game as normal...what did you do to them?" "I didn't do anything to them! You're just hallucinating." "These aren't hallucinations! They're too real! Every game I play keeps telling me that "nobody believes me". Why aren't you listening to me!?" "Then the game is right. You're just hallucinating. Goodbye." He hung up. I took a minute to collect myself. Once again the debate raged in my mind: is this real? I still didn't have an answer. I decided to review the camera footage again. Same thing. I sighed to myself and prepared to put the camcorder away when something started playing on the camera. It was footage of the 8th level, the level I left off on. However, instead of it saying Stage 8 across the top of the screen, it said "Nobody believes you". This was my definitive proof that this was real. There was no way that what was caught on camera wouldn't be what everyone would see. As I watched more, the level names changed yet again. Stage 9, Race to the Finish, was "Can't you see?". Stage 10, the Metal Bros. stage, was "How will you live?". And Stage 11, the final stage, was "Just end it." The video cut out, for good. I was, at the same time, elated and scared. I knew this was real, I could see it with my own two eyes! I even played back the video and it was still there. However, I still had the fear in my mind that I was wrong, that I was hallucinating everything. To my bed once more I went. I decided to show the footage to my parents tomorrow. I woke up the next day, feeling groggy and unsatisfied. But today was the day that I knew everyone would believe me. I corraled my parents in the living room, hooked up the camcorder to the TV, and fastforwarded to the end of Stage 7. I even got my brother on the phone to listen to my parents' reactions. Guess what happened? I'm pretty sure you know. Nothing. Nothing happened. The footage just cut out there. I fast-forwarded through the entire black screen for a minute. Nothing was there. My parents looked confused and shifted their glances to me. "Uh...April Fools?" ''I said and laughed nervously. They just shook their heads and left the room. My brother hung up the phone. Defeated, I went to unplug the camcorder, and just as I did, the video flashed three words on the TV screen. "Nobody believes you." That was it. That was literally all I could take. I yelled as loud as I could and smashed the camcorder in my hand. I knew I was getting irrational, but I didn't care. I punched the wall as hard as I could, leaving about a 5 inch dent in the wall. I stormed up to my room and went over to the GameCube. But the strangest thing happened...I didn't do anything to it. My morality came rushing back to me and I realized that, even though it's made my life horrible, it was still a gift. A gift that had brought me so much joy, and now anguish, over the past year. And, it possibly wasn't even the games' faults for what has been happening to me. Maybe it truly is just a hallucination, maybe it is all my fault. I was blinded by rage, blaming my brother for everything that had happened. Maybe the blame lied with me. I laid down in my bed again and contemplated what had happened to me over the past week or so. The games were right. I was a waste and unless I lived with my parents for the rest of my life I'd be unable to do anything useful. I was so impaired in my perception of the world that it was like I was in a completely different reality. I had no future at all! As I thought about it more, I saw that the only way to get out of this life was to end it before it got even worse. But it would be hard. I decided to use the car to assist my suicide. But how would I get to it? My parents didn't trust me driving at all, ever. I decided that I'd have to wait until night time to do this. I set my alarm clock to 1:00 AM and fell asleep. Hopefully the alarm would actually wake me up. I couldn't make it very loud to avoid waking up my parents along with me. Luckily, it did, and it only woke me up. I sprang out of bed and carefully walked down the stairs towards my parents room. They were both sound asleep, but the door was closed. I knew my mom kept her car keys in her room, so I needed to open this door as quietly as possible. ''Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak! I literally froze in place. My parents didn't even stir. I continued to slowly open the door, cringing every time it made a creak or a squeak. At one time I thought my dad had woken up, but he was just tossing and turning. I quickly grabbed the keys out of my mom's purse and got out of the room, leaving the door open. Opening the front door, I ran to the car. It was parked outside of the garage. I hopped in, turned on the ignition, and got backed out. I went around to the back of the car, put my mouth over the exhaust vent, and waited. As I waited I thought about the game. It was real. I awoke on a hard bed inside a small room. The walls were a pasty white, and I had no idea where I was. I slowly drifted back off to sleep after that, still unaware of what had happened. As I later learned, I had somehow survived. Apparently, my dog was still awake when I tried to kill myself, and was raising a storm over me. Both my parents rushed outside and picked up my unconscious body and got me to the hospital where I was able to be treated for carbon monoxide poisoning. My parents were so worried about me that they sent me to a "mental rehabilitation center" to get better care for my condition. The center was a bit dilapidated, but I made do. There were about 50 other residents, with various mental illnesses ranging from autism to Tourette's. At that center, I was the craziest person. Not even the other patients believed my stories. They all thought I hallucinated it too. In the end, that game was right. Because it was real. It was real to me. Author's Note I wrote this because of terrible creepypastas that Mutahar has read. Tried to use as few cliches as possible (which is why there is no blood anywhere ever). Blood is boring. :v EDIT: Thanks for all the love people, can't believe all the feedback I'm getting from my first creepypasta. Love you guys <3 I'd appreciate more. EDIT: OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD Category:CreepyPasta